Should You Eat Before or After Exercise?

Eating and exercise have always been the point of heated discussion. There are a lot of different points of view on this account. Some people do not eat before exercises in order not to feel nauseated.

Eating and exercise have always been the point of heated discussion. There are a lot of different points of view on this account. Some people do not eat before exercises in order not to feel nauseated.

There are those who do not eat in the morning and are hoping to burn more calories by doing so. There are athletes who consider hunger pangs as really good indicator as all the energy will be turned to exercise. However, these assumptions are wrong.

While exercising you need more energy. You should eat and exercise but all should be done in regards to your workout and the amount of your previous meal and its content.

You need to keep the energy that you get from calories to be in balance with the energy that you spend by burning these calories. During an hour your body burns about 100 calories even when you sleep. Therefore you do not need energy for just exercising; you need it to live throughout the day. If you are very active, or love big meals, or stay without food for prolonged time periods, you upset the balance. This can lead to extreme energy highs (surpluses) or lows (deficits.)

In the morning you are likely to be low on energy, especially if your last meal was at 7 p.m. the previous night and your breakfast is only at 7 a.m. If you decide to skip the breakfast, you will feel weak. You have already burnt 1,100 calories for the night and you have also reduced your carbs supply in your muscles and liver. And you need carbs to burn this fat that is present and stored in the body. When there are not enough carbs, fat is not burned and energy is not obtained, a person feels energy deficiency. In this case you really and compulsory need breakfast to refill the energy supply.

When you skip your breakfast and do your exercises, you cause even more energy depletion in the body. You will approximately burn about 500 calories during a workout. You will eat later, but by that time you will have lost 1,600 calories and therefore will tend to either not want to eat at all (so-called starvation mode, ketosis) or you will binge and overeat.

You can also eat too much and not take part in any activity at the same time. In this case you will have energy surplus. If you eat a nourishing and meal (say, 1,200 calories) and then sit, or just do not move a lot, not very many calories are burnt. Then, in the evening you have another big meal (something like 1,000 calories) and again do nothing active, you get surplus of energy of about 1, 700 calories already. Again, the morning with a good big breakfast will add even more…and so on, and so forth. You see? This is the truest way to gain weight.

Therefore, you should understand that dramatic calorie highs and lows cannot be good for you. You should match your energy needs with your calorie intake in order to keep it all balanced. Sure, you cannot be precise but at least you can abstain from energy fluctuations and make your meals balanced. Eat small meals every 3-4 hours and if your workouts are expected to be long and hard, eat more before and in between.